Monday, October 21, 2013

Is Khemka Alone In His Fight For Justice

There are hundreds of officers in every bank who are tortured as Mr. Khemka and like Ms Durga Nagpal IAS officers are being tortured by Harayana Government or UP Government.Such whimsical transfers and suspension is the well rooted culture which is not even protested by Union leaders .

Haryana set to charge Khemka in another case

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana government is busy digging out old files to line up chargesheets against whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who earned the government’s wrath after he cancelled the mutation of a land deal between Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and realty giant DLF last year.

Days after Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda approved two chargesheets against Khemka, the government has decided to seek his explanation in a four-year-old promotion case before framing a third chargesheet against him.

In the latest case, according to sources, the agriculture department had recommended a chargesheet against Khemka in connection with the promotion of an employee in 2009 when the IAS officer was managing director of Haryana Warehousing Corporation (HWC), which functions under the administrative control of the agriculture department.

HWC had promoted an establishment assistant, Ram Kumar, to the post of assistant manager (administration) on November 17, 2009, terming him most suitable and meritorious among two contenders. The other contender, Jagat Ram, had challenged the promotion before the Punjab and Haryana high court, which dismissed his petition after considering the service records of both the contenders.

Later, a division bench of the high court asked HWC to redo the exercise for promotion, observing that “…the criterion for promotion was seniority-cum-merit and not merit-cum-seniority. The promotion to Ram Kumar was not sustainable since such promotion had been made predominantly on the principle of merit, in contravention of the provisions of the regulations.”

Jagat Ram, who took voluntary retirement in 2012, was promoted to the post of assistant manager in 2011 after the Supreme Court upheld the HC verdict. Ram Kumar was reverted to his previous post.

Officials said now the government had to pay salary to two officials, Jagat Ram and Ram Kumar, for the upgraded scale from 2009 to 2011 since Jagat Ram was to be promoted with retrospective effect from November 17, 2009. On this basis, a chargesheet was proposed against Khemka, holding him responsible for this loss of government money.

According to sources, chief secretary P K Chaudhery had asked the department to seek an explanation from Khemka before framing a chargesheet. On Wednesday S S Dhillon, principal secretary to the chief minister, told TOI that Hooda had approved the chief secretary’s proposal to seek an explanation.

In less than a month, two chargesheets have already been ordered against Khemka in different matters. Apart from this, the state vigilance bureau has initiated two inquiries against him on issues related to his tenure in Haryana Seed Development Corporation.

Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka has alleged that fellow officer S S Dhillon approved the latest chargesheet against him because he (Khemka) exposed Dhillon's role in granting a commercial colony licence to Sky Light Hospitality, owned by Robert Vadra.

In an 11-page letter sent to the Haryana chief secretary on Monday, Khemka has said Dhillon could not "be expected to be objective and fair in dealing with my case file".

The Indian Express reported on October 17 that Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had approved charges against Khemka, holding him responsible for the alleged poor sale of wheat seeds when he was managing director of Haryana Seeds Development Corporation from October 15, 2012 to April 4, 2013.

The chargesheet was allegedly pushed through to Hooda by S S Dhillon, who is principal secretary to the chief minister, despite chief secretary P K Chaudhery having "reservations".

"If anything was held against me for the unsold seed stocks, the minimum expected was to at least afford me an opportunity to explain before publicly humiliating me with the announcement of a second chargesheet in the media. There seems to be common purpose amongst Roshan Lal, S S Dhillon, T C Gupta [Director General, Town and Country Planning Department] and the chief minister," Khemka said.

Roshan Lal is Haryana's principal secretary (agriculture), and was allegedly the first officer to recommend that a chargesheet be served on Khemka.

"S S Dhillon was Director General of Town and Country Planning Department and Urban Estates for more than four years and later principal secretary of the same department for more than two years... It was Dhillon

who was Director of Town and Country Planning [who] had wrongly granted commercial colony licence to M/s Sky Light Hospitality on 15.12.08. S S Dhillon cannot be expected to be objective and fair in dealing with my case file...," Khemka has said.

‘Ask Manmohan to explain other coal block allocations’--The Hindu

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has justified the allocation of a coal block to Aditya Birla Group company Hindalco, must be asked to explain through an affidavit the allocation of the remaining 140 coal blocks.

An application was filed on Monday by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma in the light of the Prime Minister’s Office issuing a statement justifying the allocation to Hindalco.

Mr. Sharma, main petitioner in the coal scam case, said: “For the first time since the … scam came to light, the Prime Minister has explained about one allocation. But there have been more than 150 coal block allocations, and only he will be able to explain all of them.”

Until now, the Centre, in its reply, had not stated anything about the true role of then Coal Minister [Dr. Singh] in the allocation… It had put the responsibility upon the screening committee, concealing the fact that the committee was nothing but an eyewash, and the allotments had in fact been done by the then Coal Minister himself, he said.

Quoting Dr. Singh’s statement, Mr. Sharma said: “It is a confession of the then Coal Minister to allot the coal block [to Hindalco], and he had taken a decision on the basis of the documents and facts submitted to him. Therefore, he must be called upon to file his affidavit before this court to make his position clear for suitable action pertaining to the FIR [against Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla and the former Coal Secretary, P.C. Parakh] and criminal action based upon such confession by the then coal minister.”

Mr. Sharma had filed an application against the CBI for filing the FRI against Mr. Birla and Mr. Parakh without including the name of Dr. Singh, who was Coal Minister at that time of the allotment to Hindalco.

He refuted the CBI’s statement that the allotment made by the screening committee was changed by the then Coal Secretary. Coal block allotments were not in the hands of the screening committee. He annexed copies of the letters written by various Ministers to the Coal Minister, requesting allocation to applicants. Though 14 FIRs were filed in the case, he apprehended that the Prime Minister had directed the CBI to file a defective FIR against Mr. Birla and Mr. Parakh so that they could escape criminal liability and the accused could get the FIR quashed.

He sought a direction to the Centre and the CBI to file all letters of recommendation issued by then Minister of State for Steel and other Ministers, MPs and MLAs and to file copies of the FIRs registered by the CBI. He sought a directive to the CBI to include the Prime Minister in the FIR registered on October 15.